2022 Reading List
The full Book Club for the Planet 2022 reading list is here.
Hi friends! This is Book Club for the Planet, an online community for us to read about the climate crisis in community. Want to see all of the 2022 book picks and recommendations in one place? Check out my shop link at Bookshop.org.
Sometime in February of 2021, I start writing down books on a Google spreadsheet. I then spend the rest of the year adding more, shuffling the list around, ordering a few to skim and get to know them IRL, hosting a survey from readers and then asking our community on Zoom, point-blank, “This book or this book?” All to say, our 2022 reading list has changed over a dozen times but now, it’s the end of 2021 and it’s time.
The same rules as 2021 apply—prioritize voices of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ writers; no best sellers; and selections should “talk” to each other. I also haven’t read any of the books, with one exception (but I think Octavia Butler is worth the exception and a re-read).
So, here’s our 2022 reading list. I hope you discover a new book that resonates deeply with your search for answers, purpose, healing, guidance, hope, or a companion in loss and grief. To better days ahead.
January - February
Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen
We owe much of our knowledge of the changing climate to Dr. Lonnie Thompson, one of the world’s most famous climate scientists, who has spent more time in the high altitude “death zone”—above 18,000 feet—than any other person who’s ever lived, all to gather critical data about our planet’s history of warming.
Ice sheets, the source of ice cores that tell us about changing climate through geological time, are not only found in the Arctic—they’re also all over the world’s mountains near the equator. Dr. Thompson pioneered the study of the world’s tropical ice sheets (which had never been done before), risking his life to do so, to paint a full picture of the climate record all over the world. He talks about his life’s work in this short, must-watch TED Talk.
In the last survey among readers, you were all most interested in three areas: on-the-ground climate science, climate fiction, and meditations on grief and loss. With that helpful feedback, I’m thrilled to start off the year digging into Thin Ice, a biography-slash-adventure-story about Dr. Lonnie Thompson and his crew’s glacial expeditions and the climate data they’ve uncovered.
For continued reading, please check out The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail; Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert MacFarlane; and Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.
March - April
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue OR Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Everyone in the book club was hungry for more fiction, so we’re doubling it up this year. The first selection of fiction gives you a choice between two stories of revolutionary Black women confronting climate collapse: How Beautiful We Were, listed as one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, and Parable of the Sower, a visionary sci-fi novel by the beloved Octavia Butler published almost 30 years ago. Read one book or read both—we’ll have two separate book club meet-ups to discuss each of them separately.
How Beautiful We Were is a multi-decade story about a young woman in a fictional African village who starts a political revolution against an American oil company that’s wreaking environmental havoc on her community. Parable of the Sower is a story of a revolutionary young woman of a different sort, living in a post-apocalyptic California where wildfires, water shortages, and drug addiction is rampant, who starts a spiritual movement. Octavia Butler has experienced a revival in recent years due, among many reasons, for both her prescient visions of the future and popularization by Adrienne Maree Brown. (Her 1998 sequel, Parable of the Talents, even features a politician whose campaign slogan is, “Make America Great Again.”) I’m incredibly excited to read both of these books side-by-side.
For continued reading, please check out Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements and Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, both by Adrienne Maree Brown. Also read all of the 12 winning short stories from Grist’s Imagine 2200: Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors climate fiction writing contest! (Adrienne Maree Brown was one of the judges.)
May - June
Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California's Wildfires by Jaime Lowe
In line with your eagerness to read more on-the-ground climate stories, we’re turning to wildfires—the form of climate-induced natural disaster that affected the largest number of book club members last year (many of you are in California and Oregon).
Journalist Jaime Lowe first wrote about the incarcerated women fighting California’s fires (most for less than $2 an hour) for her story in The New York Times Magazine, and expanded on that work for her book, Breathing Fire. In California, 30% of the state’s on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates, and about 200 of those firefighters are women working in all-female crews. This book is about those women’s stories, as well as the prison-industrial complex, economic disparity, and of course, climate change.
For continued reading, please check out the incredible Fires Substack by Stacy Selby, a former female wildland firefighter, about wildfire management within the context of colonial history, ecology, and culture. Make sure to read her 10-part series, What was California like Before Fire Suppression?
July - August
Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming by Andreas Malm
A few of you suggested we read Andreas Malm’s popular polemic, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, but in line with my rule of “no best sellers,” I’ve chosen one of Malm’s chunkier tomes that’s been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years. Fossil Capital promises to be a scathing history of capitalism’s race to the bottom and its prioritization of fossil fuels over other renewable energy sources. We haven’t read almost anything as a group about energy and renewables, so I’m eager to read this one as a group through Malm’s unique lens.
By the way, Verso Books has frequent sales (this title is currently 40% off), so I recommend buying your copy directly from the publisher. The hyperlink above will take you there.
For continued reading, please check out Who Owns the Wind?: Climate Crisis and the Hope of Renewable Energy by David McDermott Hughes and Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough by Holly Jean Buck. Both are published by Verso and also available for 40% off list price during their end-of-year sale.
September - October
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline OR Blackfish City by Sam Miller
Your second fiction read of the year is also a reader’s choice! As with the Spring option, read one book or read both—we’ll have two separate book club meet-ups to discuss each of them separately. Both of our Fall picks are futuristic sci-fi and fantasy stories set in what can best be described as the area currently known as Canada and weave together Indigenous voices and mythologies.
While the multiple award-winning The Marrow Thieves is a YA book, its themes are definitely mature. In a futuristic world destroyed by global warming, people have lost their ability to dream. North America’s Indigenous people are the only ones still able to dream, and they’re being hunted for their bone marrow which holds the cure for the rest of the world. The story follows an Indigenous teenager and his friends fighting for refuge and survival from the marrow-stealing “recruiters.”
Grist has put together an excellent “Definitive Climate Fiction Reading List” and there were a few that I hadn’t read, including Blackfish City. I was immediately drawn in by the setting—a floating city in the Arctic Circle, built after “the climate wars,” that’s crumbling from decay and corruption. And then, a strange visitor arrives at the city—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—and changes everything.
For continued reading, please check out a new book coming in April 2022, We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth; Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch; Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga; Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq; and The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He. So many books, so little time.
November - December
Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming by Liz Carlisle
With so much stress packed into the holiday season, I’m trying to end each year with something lighter. In 2022, we’ll look to Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors' methods of growing food in Liz Carlisle’s newest book, Healing Grounds, coming in March 2022. While regenerative agriculture can be, at its most basic, a form of carbon capture and sequestration, it can also be a source of much deeper community and ancestral healing. This is the only book on this list that hasn’t been published as of my writing this post, and I love the opportunity this presents for us to all read something new together.
For continued reading, please check out Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman, and Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson.
Want to see all of these books in one place? Check out my shop link at Bookshop.org.